KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

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Rev. Gabriel Burdett explains Intelligent Falling. "Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.

The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."

"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."

Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy Scripture.

"Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."

"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"

Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.

"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."

105 here today. Humidity this morning is 55%. It doesn't feel good. It's probably pretty warm in D.C. but Pat will notice the dryer air when she gets home.

Does it cool off in the evening? That was one thing I thought very attractive about the Manzano Mountains, east of Albuquerque when I almost moved there a few years ago. Sunset meant a lot more comfort. Not so here in North Texas.

The humidity isn't to be scoffed at. Up on the bench at the Legion Hovel there was a terrible tragedy. Saturday afternoon was the annual "All You Can Drink Beer Festival And Potato Bake-Off." The Bake-Off was cancelled due to the heat (as it is every year), but the beer drinking was carried off in its usual superb form.

Unfortunately, the humidity at Hovel was -12.4%, it being higher up than the weather station on the valley floor. The moisture was sucked right out of the beer as soon as it left the keg, leaving nought but a slushy compound of beer residue in your cup, stein, flagon or barrel. When this was consumed, as it was of course, it sucked the moisture out of the surrounding tissues. Downing one of them left a human raisin, two of them left a freeze-dried body, and three of them left a pile of dust to be swept away by the hot sirroco wind.

We lost Slim Chance, Geralo Fats, River Silt, Half-Gun Sam, and Short Rope to the wind. They're now somewhere out on the Snake River Plain, pushing up potatoes. The others were taken to American Falls Reservoir and dunked repeatedly until they were back to their abnormal selves. Then they were taken to the Drunk Tank in the Hovel to sober up; it was the first use of the DT since the pink elephants and blue snakes that decorate the walls were refreshed.

97F. Humidity's 11%. I've finished the grass, unloaded the bags of topsoil, and have blown the porch and patio clean of grass, etc. Now just laundry and picking up and putting away and...Pat comes back on Tuesday evening.

Mom, you're looking a little toasty here in the middle of the page. Come on over under the shade and have a glass of freshly made iced tea. Here's the chair I always move around to the shady spot, right next to the wading pool. Don't worry about the dogs, they'll just drool on your lap a little before they lie down again. And Cinnamon will probably take a dip (it's her pool). You can dangle your feet in it if you want, we clean it every couple of days.

Seated at the oaken table, in the hall without a roof, Eyes ensanguined from perusing tomes of eldrich, arcane lore Comes the slowly, soft unfolding from the pigeons overhead All you know and need e'er know, wisdom's straight unvarnished truth, Splattered o'er your chairs and parchments, The meaning of the Raven's "Nevermore."

Oh no! We still use catalog cards and still maintain the card catalog. In fact, we use both a computer catalog AND a card catalog. And the catalog cards are written in the "library hand" using crow-quill pens and that good ink that doesn't fade or go brown. Technical Services insists on doing this, and they have a 55-gallon drum of ink in the back that's never been tapped along with several hundred pounds of new catalog cards. Out here in Idaho, a very "red" state, we don't hold with all them new, unproven, things like typewrites and stuff. We wouldn't have the IBM-PCs we have if the State Library hadn't bought 'em for us. And a danged good thing they bought us all them 5.25 inch floppy disks at the same time, too, 'cause there's only a couple stores around here that sell 'em anymore.

Index cards? What century is your library in, Amos? The only index cards I've seen recently are for the tons of federal documents that aren't cataloged in the computer system in our library. That catalog is a novelty, a conversation piece.

A library without a roof Is good -- it brings perspective Enjoins the seekers after truth From haughty, cold directives And stays them from pretence, aloof And condescending,

To walk among the whispers there Of ages wise and good, while overhead The local star goes by, and summer air Reminds the scholars, looking up in dread From curls of complex, mental snares Into whose coils they have been led, That life does not happily bless The unbending.

And if, immersed in tides of facts And paradox and half-moved arrows, The scholar, rumbling in his tracks Should be distracted by some sparrow Or a humming bird's sudden attack And finds the world had grown less narrow And fields, more than fences, could use Some mending.

This would not be a bad thing, in truth I think I'd like to study there-- A hall of books without a roof, Where dew can fall on students hair Where stars can visit in the listening booths, And winds can turn the leaves in pairs And send the index cards awry, in a dance Unending.

Well yeah, I've been that way for about a week. But I went to the doctor today and she manipulated my neck and prescribed a muscle relaxant for me to take at bedtime. Hopefully I won't be stiff-necked much longer.

Tea. Cuppa tea. I've been trying to cut back on the caffiene. I have a little headache. I'll be back later (the cat wants me to go take a nap with him--maybe I'll take up that invitation, and it sounds much more restful than sleeping with Gluon on the bed).

A boson is a particle, A sort of tiny article But a boatswain may be what you're thinking Of (unless you have been drinking). Not an officer, wears no hat, Much too competent for that! Bosn's know the ins and outs Of evey line and rope about And where's the lead, and where's the brush And red-lead needed in a rush And how to parcel, serve and splice, ANd other talents not so nice.

Isn't a boson a ship's officer or something? I thing s/he has her/his own chair as well as his/her own whistle. And didn't hadron build that wall in Britain that seperated it from Scotland or someplace? (I only ask these things because I'm an aware person.)

Pity the poor civilian who tries a Google search today on "astronaut spatula" or on "spin-charge separation" and lands at Mudcat instead of the normal news sites. Finding our long drawn out discussions is liable to both confuse and inspire. Not necessarily at the same time or in the same folks.

Ever see Gluon chase her/his tail? That duckdob's known all about spinons and holons all along.

I'd like to know what dimension the one-dimensional solid has, as I think that such knowledge is critical to understanding the experiment. Was it length? Width? Height? Time? And if there was mass how was that related to the monodimensionality of the SrCuO2?

"The theory has been around for more than 40 years, but only now has it been confirmed through direct and unambiguous experimental results. Working at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a team of researchers has observed the theoretical prediction of electron "spin-charge separation" in a one-dimensional solid. These results hold implications for future developments in several key areas of advanced technology, including high-temperature superconductors, nanowires and spintronics.

Just as the body and wheels of a car are thought to be intrinsic parts of a whole, incapable of separate and independent actions, i.e., the body goes right while the wheels go left, so, too, are electrical charge and spin intrinsic components of an electron. Except, according to theory, in one-dimensional solids, where the collective excitation of a system of electrons can lead to the emergence of two new particles called "spinons" and "holons." A spinon carries information about an electron's spin and a holon carries information about its charge, and they do so as separate and independent entities. Numerous experiments have tried to confirm the creation of spinons and holons, referred to as spin-charge separation, but it took the technological advantages offered at ALS Beamline 7.0.1, also known as the Electronic Structure Factory (ESF), to achieve success.

In a paper published in the June 2006 issue of the journal Nature Physics, researchers have reported the observation of distinct spinon and holon spectral signals in one-dimensional samples of copper oxide, SrCuO2, using the technique known as ARPES, for angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The research was led by Changyoung Kim, at Yonsei University, in Seoul, Korea, ALS scientist Eli Rotenberg, and Zhi-Xun Shen of Stanford University, a leading authority on the use of ARPES technology. Co-authoring the Nature-Physics paper with them were Bum Joon Kim and Hoon Koh, plus S.J. Oh, H. Eisaki, N. Motoyama, S. Uchida, T. Tohyama, and S. Maekawa.

"There have been claims of observing the two peak spectral structures of spin-charge separation in the past, but they turned out to be wrong or have plenty of ambiguity. This was primarily because those results were obtained from complicated materials and were not theoretically backed up," said Kim, who has spent several years investigating the spin-charge separation phenomenon. "Our observations using ARPES are direct and the results are unambiguous because they were obtained from a simple material that left little room for misinterpretation. Also, our results are theoretically backed up."

Said Shen, "Our results confirming the idea of spin-charge separation are important because they reveal deep insights into the quantum system - and the beauty and subtleties associated with it. From this study we know more about how the collective behavior of a system of particles can be so fundamentally different from that of the constituent individuals."

The idea behind spin-charge separation is that electrons behave differently when their range of motion is restricted to a single dimension, as opposed to three or even two dimensions. When moving through one dimension, for example, the electrons are lined up head-to-tail, making the repulsive force between their negative electrical charges overridingly dominant. The restricted movement of electrons through one-dimensional material was expected to give rise to collective effects that would be strong enough to break the information flow of spin and charge from a single electron. "

We're agreed it's heavily armed though? If so, I'm borrowing it. A bunch of Italian teenagers with attitude are about a brief lesson that they are not the loudest thing going, and don't have to try......

BTW I found out what was wrong with the car the dog was driving. It was an automatic....

When your memory starts to go, forget it, Rapaire. That plane was not a "Spat", it was a "Spayed", and the pilot's name was "Spade Sam", who was so glamorized in the popular press in his days as a dogfighter that pets all over the nation were named after him.